BERLIN, Jan 27: Former German president Johannes Rau, a champion of ethnic integration and reconciliation with Israel, died on Friday at the age of 75 after a long illness.

After his presidential term ended in July 2004, capping a half century in politics, Mr Rau underwent two operations from which he never recovered.

Mr Rau, a devout Christian known affectionately as Brother Johannes, was one of the Social Democratic Party’s leading lights.

He joined the SPD in 1957 and rose through party ranks to become premier in 1978 of North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state and its industrial heartland, where he governed for two decades.

“Germany has lost a definitive politician, a great president and a man who made the world more humane,” his successor, former International Monetary Fund chief Horst Koehler, said.

Chancellor Angela Merkel called Mr Rau ‘an extraordinary person, a respected politician, an exemplary democrat and a widely popular president’.

Former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said Mr Rau had made ‘an invaluable contribution to the maintenance of peace and social cohesion in our society’.—AFP